(01-22-2019, 01:23 PM)B2hibry Wrote:

(01-22-2019, 12:04 PM)TJBender Wrote: Personal opinion: why waste time and money covering up murals? The guy's "genocide" was totally unintentional. How was he supposed to know that indigenous people had never gotten a cold before?

Historical perspective: there was really nothing remarkable about Columbus worth celebrating. He was a career failure who somehow talked Spanish royalty into giving him ships, managed to crash the most expensive one into a rock, stumbled across an island and just assumed it was India, realized his mistake, then went home and told the king of Spain that they hadn't found any tea, but there were a bunch of dudes in funny clothing who had gold over there. He didn't even discover North America. That was the Vikings centuries prior to Columbus mucking around. It's kind of like being taught in elementary school that Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe even though he died around the halfway point, and it was his crew under a new captain that were the first to do it.

While in large part he was rather unremarkable he instigated the mapping of the sailing routes from Europe to the Americas. He also helped spread Christianity to the Americas. I guess he could take credit for attempting to boost the natives immune systems as well. So I guess we can't really say he did nothing.

Although the Vikings set foot on North America about 500 years before, it was for their benefit and nothing more. No commerce, no riches, no settlement beyond their tribes, etc. If only they had ventured south!